Archive for October 9th, 2007

Christy had a great post this morning about the sheer evil of the wingnutosphere’s slander and harassment of the Frost family after 12-year-old Graeme had the courage temerity to deliver the Democratic response to Dubya’s “S-CHIP is fiscally irresponsible!” radio address a couple of weeks ago.Not only are the professional right-wing shriekers trying to discredit Graeme Frost as a spokeskid for S-CHIP, but they’re trying to turn his family into the personification of how the program is supposedly abused.

In short, it’s the same narrative that conservatives have used against Welfare and pretty much Every Other Social Program Ever: Wealthy liberal cheaters are stealing your hard-earned tax dollars to get government services for free, so they can buy Cadillacs and liquor and drugs. (They’re actually correct, if you substitute “conservative” and/or “corporate” for “liberal,” but I digress…)

However, as deceptive and awful as the old “welfare queens” canard was, this is even worse. They’re demonizing and attacking a specific family and making their life hell, including their two kids. Look, if you Freepers and Malkinites want to argue against the merits of SCHIP, that’s fine, good luck with that. If you want to make bogus arguments about how unscrupulous people will game the system, that’s standard procedure for Bush loyalists. But calling a 12-year-old and his family liars and cheats because they spoke out against your fearless leader, that’s the mark of true moral bottom-feeders.

So I have a question for the wavering moderate Republicans and the five Blue Dog holdouts in the House who still don’t want to vote for SCHIP: Do you really want to be on the same side as these people? Do you really want their psychotic, spittle-flecked stink to rub off on you? Do you really want to make a stand against common decency and the Christian values that St. Maverick McCain says our country was founded on?

Typically, I hate comment spam even more than e-mail spam, because it invades my space in a way that e-mail does not. It’s one thing to try to sell me something dubious via e-mail, but another thing entirely to use my blog as a billboard for your dodgy crap or bogus website. However, I have to admit that this spam comment here is pretty damned impressive:

OCTOBER 8–An Alabama minister who died in June of “accidental mechanical asphyxia” was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report.

Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge’s death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery’s Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge’s two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister’s rubber briefs.

What makes this especially worthy of note aside from the surreal weirdness:

Gary Aldridge graduated from Liberty University and later worked for the late Jerry Falwell.

At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, this points up one of the most striking things about all the fundies and social conservatives who keep their, ah, less-than-mainstream sexual proclivities under wraps: They’re spectacularly incompetent at them. Then again, I suppose the incompetent ones are the only ones we hear about.

This should put to rest any whispers that Dubya might be gay. If that were true, he would undoubtedly have killed, incapacitated or incarcerated himself by now. I think it more likely that he’s simply asexual, like a garden gnome. A spiteful, nasty, mean-spirited garden gnome.

This is sick. The right is going after the 12 year old who gave the Saturday Democratic address supporting the SCHIP program. Remember him?

Graeme and his 9-year-old sister, Gemma, were passengers in the family SUV in December 2004 when it hit a patch of black ice and slammed into a tree. Both were taken to a hospital with severe brain trauma. Graeme was in a coma for a week and still requires physical therapy.

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work.

Having priced private insurance that would cost more than their mortgage – about $1,200 a month – they continue to rely on the government program. In Maryland, families that earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level – about $60,000 for a family of four – are eligible.

Think Progress reports that the pathological rightwing freakshow has accused this family of being “rich” because Graham earns a scholarship to go to private school, and his sister goes to a special school paid for by the state because she was handicapped by the accident. Oh, and they have a house they bought years ago for 55,000 when the neighborhood was dicey. Apparently, they should be living in their car and the handicapped daughter should be selling pencils on the street corner. That’s the world these empty souls want to live in.

The right-wing immediately condemned Democrats for daring to put a human face on the SCHIP program at a time when Bush was proposing a “diminishment of the number of children covered.” Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) – who has posed with children to advance his own political agenda – claimed Graeme was being used “as a human shield.”

This from the people who had a party in the white house with “snowflake babies” to justify vetoing stem cell research, another cruel and hateful policy decision by the so-called compassionate conservatives of the Republican party.

Conservatives have more recently turned their targets on young Graeme Frost himself. A poster at the Free Republic propagated information alleging that Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government. Among other bits of information, the post by the Freeper “icwhatudo” asserts that Graeme and his sister Gemma attend wealthy schools that cost “nearly $40,000 per year for tuition” and live in a well-off home.

Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.

Right wing bloggers have been harassing the Frosts, calling their home numerous times to get information about their private lives. Compassionate conservatism indeed.

UPDATE: TP commenter Mr. Ed notes that Malkin visited the Frost’s home and business today. A coworker of Mr. Frost tells Malkin that the family is “struggling,” but she refuses to believe it.